I forgot how shitty Windows is

I've never plugged a peripheral into a mac since I switched 5 years ago, and had it not work. Never.

My brother sent me his PC, with a pretty good video card in it. I plug it into my monitor. It won't work, goes black when it boots to desktop. He can remote login, but I can't see shit. I play with settings in VGA mode. No setting above 800 * 600 will work.

It was an old shite 19" monitor, so I order a Dell 22" monitor so I can use it.

Still doesn't work. Will not display the desktop.

Now I'm told to reinstall the operating system, and then reinstall the driver. Maybe THEN it will work.

What a fucking joke. Windows is a piece of shit. I haven't had to fuck with shit like this in 5 years. I can't imagine that people really choose to live like this. Its awful.

I have a really hard time believing a CRT couldn't display above 800x600, unless it was 10 years old. My guess is that it was a refresh rate problem, something that could have been easily fixed in the settings.

Linux does NOT have better hardware support. Try running dual monitors on certain laptops, like mine. It will take hours to setup vs 2 minutes in Windows. Linux is just not there with hardware support as complete as Windows. (I am a Linux n00b, but still. It just shouldn't be as hard as it is).

And you probably just had a bad experience. You should have had your brother remotely reinstall the driver.

Also, if Windows tried to put a stanglehold on the hardware their OSes ran on, they'd be raped.

If you can get 800x600 but nothing higher I can almost guarantee you it is a video card driver problem.

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willing to bet it's the refresh rate the video card was set to. never seen a video card driver problem in my life that would not display a certain resolution. when one changes res and the screen goes black, that's an issue with the monitor interpreting the signal.

the vid card was probably set to some high 1920x1280 res the 19" couldn't handle. bumped down the res, and some vid cards auto bump up the refresh rates past 60 to 70, 75, 85 and the old 19" may not be able to go past that refresh rate.

willing to bet it's the refresh rate the video card was set to. never seen a video card driver problem in my life that would not display a certain resolution. when one changes res and the screen goes black, that's an issue with the monitor interpreting the signal.

the vid card was probably set to some high 1920x1280 res the 19" couldn't handle. bumped down the res, and some vid cards auto bump up the refresh rates past 60 to 70, 75, 85 and the old 19" may not be able to go past that refresh rate.

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yeah, thats a good bet.

In any case I am sure the majority of us would have tried 2 or 3 obvious things, figured it out, and not given a second though. Certainly not getting all frustrated by it and considering reinstalling the OS and crying about how terrible windows is on a forum lol

sounds like you got bad advice from whoever told you you had to reinstall the OS.

and yes, OSX is more reliable because there are really only a handful of different combinations of hardware available when you compare it to a PC. i like them both fine, but you can't say that Apple's decision to limit hardware support is a great decision all around. you can get a pretty powerful PC for about $700. the best you can get from Apple is the Mac Mini, which may be slick but it is far from powerful.